The last four years have been difficult if you’re a Mets fan. Mets fans have had to watch Carlos Beltran take a called third strike to end the Mets’  2006 season, the collapse of ’07, the mini-collapse of ’08, the injury filled fourth place finish of ’09, and now the mediocrity of 2010. Through all of this Omar Minaya has been at the helm. The Wilpons have supported Minaya through all of this and are seemingly the only people on this planet who feel he is doing a good job.

Minaya’s tenure has seen more failure than success. The problem is how Minaya reacts to these failures. Instead of viewing them as failures, he views them as “near misses”. This is apparent by the way he goes about  during the off season.

Let’s use the 2008-2009 off season as an example. The 2008 Mets had once again been eliminated from playoff contention on the last day of the season, but more importantly it was the second straight season where the team had choked in September.  Minaya didn’t see a team that collapsed for a second straight year. Minaya saw a team that won 89 games and fell one game short of the postseason. This caused Minaya to believe that adding a big piece or two will get the Mets into the playoffs. He went on to sign Francisco Rodriguez and trade for JJ Putz to solidify the 2008 team’s problem which was the bullpen. Instead of shaking up a team that wreaked of failure, he kept the same team together with the addition of two new pieces. The result? More failure. Both the 2009 and 2010 teams continued the Mets’ trend of failure and disappointment. The smart thing would have been to shake up the roster by finding different players to put around Wright,Reyes, and Santana.

That was just one example. Other than the ’05-06 off season, Minaya has never made a series of shake up moves. He has done what he has always done, which is to add another big name to a “near miss”  team in an attempt to get them over the hump. The signing of Jason Bay is a more recent example of the same strategy. To date this strategy hasn’t worked for Minaya, yet we still see Minaya attempt to make it work every off season.

Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that his teams have failed, or maybe he is just dumb. Whatever it is, Mets ownership cannot let this continue. The Mets need a new captain at the helm. One who will not be afraid to shake up this roster and take this organization in a fundamentally different direction.